Blue Cheese and the immune system

Yes, that is a weird title, but it is catchy! Ok seriously blue cheese does effect the immune system and it is positive effect too. Actually eating pretty much any fungus (possibly even those little mushrooms at the salad bar) has an effect. The effect is caused by glycoproteins the fungus produce. When foreign proteins (antigens) enter the blood stream through the intestines, the presentation to the immune system generally has an immunosupressive effect (unless the reaction causes anaphylactic shock). This is why raw honey harvested in the area you live helps with pollen allergies. However, the glycoproteins from the fungus (blue cheese is blue because there is mold growing in it, yes that is on purpose!) are presented to the immunosystem differently. Remember fungus is very sneaky, and hard to get rid of (think about how long you have to use the cream to get rid of athlete’s foot or nail fungus) so seeing proteins produced by fungus in the blood (yes your immune system can tell) is very alarming to the immune system. Even though the fungus that produced the glycoproteins is harmless and dead, the glycoproteins it made put the immune system on alert, especially the cells that are in charge of surveillance. These cells begin to actively hunt (and hunt is the right word) for anything out of the ordinary (as I said fungus infects are sneaky since they are generally only in outer most layers of cells (skin, nail bed) or actually external (trush and yeast infections). (A brief tangent: women shouldn’t laugh cause they get athlete’s foot too, and men shouldn’t laugh cause uncircumcised men can get yeast infections too.)
Now then while the immune system is hunting for a phantom infection, it might find a tumor or viral infection, that under normal circumstances it had missed. This is source of most medicinal mushrooms anticancer properties, the mushrooms produce proteins that really irk the immune system but since there is no infection the tumor becomes the whipping boy. So, eat your blue cheese, perhaps you’ll live longer. (Please note if the cheese turns blue or any other color on its own, don’t eat it! And you can’t just cut the fuzzy part off and eat the rest. Many molds produce toxins and secrete them into the food; these toxins can make you sick or dead!!!)